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Higher education's purpose is to equip students for success in life -- in the workplace, in communities, and their personal lives. While this purpose may have remained constant for centuries, the world around colleges and universities is undergoing significant change. Higher education is under pressure to meet greater expectations, whether for student numbers, educational preparation, workforce needs, or economic development. Meanwhile, the resources available are likely to decline. New models, an intense focus on the student experience, and a drive for innovation and entrepreneurism will ensure that higher education continues to meet society's needs. Information technology supports virtually every aspect of higher education, including finances, learning, research, security, and sustainability, and IT professionals need to understand the range of problems their institutions face so they apply IT where it brings greatest value. Creating this future will require collaboration across organizational and national boundaries, bringing together the collective intelligence of people from backgrounds including education, corporations, and government.

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EDUCAUSE Staff Picks

IT-Based Transformation in Higher Education: Possibilities and Prospects, Greg Jackson, EDUCAUSE, March 2012. A Discussion of how achieving both greater efficiency and better outcomes in higher education through information technology requires a commitment to fundamental, unfettered thinking about the future both within and outside current institutions—the kind of process many institutions are beginning to undertake.

Innovating the 21st-Century University: It’s Time!, EDUCAUSE Review, Volume 45, Number 1, 2010. If colleges and universities open up and embrace collaborative learning and collaborative knowledge production, they have a chance of surviving and even thriving in the networked, global economy of the future.

The Changing Landscape of Higher Education, EDUCAUSE Review, Volume 46, Number 1, 2011. Focusing strictly on technology trends can obscure other environmental factors that are drivers for innovation in higher education. The authors identify ten fissures in the landscape that are creating areas of potentially tectonic change.